Remember this post a while back with me doing a toot about the Border people. Well what I didn't say was they treated my other half quite badly that day. They took her passport off her and went away with it to god knows where and after about 10 minutes of her just stood there somebody asked her if she was being dealt with. She told this person that another officer had taken her passport and they then went off to find the one dealing with her. They then came back and just handed her the passport without any word of explanation and told her "everything is ok you can go". She made a complaint to them via their website as there was a bit more to it than I describe above and we got a reply today . Guess what.......they could not substantiate the complaint because they couldn't identify the officer concerned from our description and none of them could remember us that day. The "officer" was female with blonde hair and pony tail around mid 30's. There were 2 female officers on at that time. One was shortish with black hair and the other was blonde about mid 30's. Hmmmmm!!! let me see now what part of the description couldn't they understand I wonder. Basically all we got was a lecture on why the Border people stop people entering the UK and an offer that if not satisfied with the reply you could fill in yet another online form and start again. I absolutely believe they didn't bother to even look into the complaint at all. And these arrogant arseholes wonder why people get stroppy with them.
Friday 16th...Daily Telegraph.
Up to 250,000 people drop off the radar and end up as illegal immigrants every year, according to secret Home Office figures, amid warnings that border controls are completely ineffective and will only get worse after Brexit.
David Wood, who was head of immigration enforcement at the Home Office until 2015, said more than 1.2 million illegal immigrants were living in Britain, predominantly after overstaying their visas.
People are not aware of the scale of the problem because official figures are not published, and Home Office estimates for illegal immigrants are kept secret by ministers because they are "embarrassing", according to experts.
In a highly critical paper for Civitas, written with Alasdair Palmers, a former Home Office speechwriter, Mr Wood said the Home Office had privately estimated between 150,000 and 250,000 foreign nationals fail to return to their home country when they should.
They include people who come to the UK illegally, those refused asylum (around 26,000 last year) and students and others who overstay visas.
However, the true numbers are not recorded officially because the Government's new e-borders system does not share data with the Office for National Statistics and others, leading to inaccurate figures that are no better than "guesses", they said. Mr Wood and Mr Palmer added: "It is understandable that the Home Office should have kept those estimates to itself: they are politically extremely embarrassing.
My passport ran out last year, I will not risk renewing it.....joking aside it is completely unbelievable the state of our border controls, it amazes me sensible how they had time to bother with Mrs sensible at all....who was an easy yes... let her enter....and then for the person making the query not to come back...but someone else does it.....last time we went to Greece their ex-ray equipment discovered a very small pair of folding nail scissors in our hand luggage and confiscated them....looking into the container that they were thrown into...I thought what a nice little side line they've got going here.....there were hundreds of trivial "weapons" there....all from package holidaymakers....ok should have gone in main case....they were damn expensive scissors that folded up in an ingenious way, highway robbery personally.
Yet a terrorist the other year had no trouble getting on a flight with a "bomb" in the heel of his shoe and only because he was seen suspiciously playing with his heel did he draw attention to himself.
Being an island should make it easier for us to control our borders.....seeing airports and seaports are the easy entrances to control....ok Coastguards have an awkward job to observe are coasts....but must be easier than trying to control land borders....although hundreds of mile of barbed wire fencing is being tried in parts of the EU at the moment.